We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gabe Hagen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gabe below.

Alright, Gabe thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

It was one of those nights during the Arizona winter that you can only describe as still. It wasn’t wet, or cloudy, or even particularly cold – but the air just sits there, unmoving and unchanging, even after the sun has long set.

We had only been in operation for a month. My husband and I had made the rather dubious decision to open limited hours, without staff, while we worked out the kinks and finalized the menu, and the absolutely questionable decision to assign 11am – 10pm as our initial operating hours. Between little rushes from meeting-goers at the non-profit space next door, this arrangement left plenty of time to gab with the occasional customer and really dig into what they liked about our shop, how they had found us, and what we could do better.

When the young man first walked in, I noted a lingering glance at the Queermas Tree at the far end of the bar, but I didn’t put too much stock in that; most visitors couldn’t help but gawk at the rainbow-colored tree. The twenty-something kid looked like any other, perhaps a bit more edgy, maybe a college student, maybe a tradesperson. We exchanged Whats-ups and Hows-it-goins, and he ordered the Cinnamon Roll Latte, moving down to the end of the bar to inspect the murals on the wall while he waited for me to turn beans and steam into something that would keep him warm and awake.

When I walked the finished product down the bar to hand to him, I found him studying the spines of the small collection of books that made up our lending library, eyes red and welling with tears. Our library, now swollen with the generosity of so many, is full of stories featuring LGBTQ characters. It’s there to let queer people know that they can be the hero of their own story, that they aren’t alone, and that they belong. For this young man, in this moment, this small stack toppled a tower of anxiety and distress. He shared with me that he’d recently been released from the hospital. He was attending a meeting next door. He was beating Fentanyl. He was trans.

And he felt safe, and seen, and optimistic. And that’s when I knew that all the work and stress and long hours were going to be worth it.

Since then, we’ve brought on an amazing staff and expanded our hours. And we’ve continued to find ways to signal acceptance and celebration of every cross-section of our community. The community has continued to take us up on that invitation. We’re constantly amazed at how many individuals find us. How they find each other in this space and create warmth and laughter and, at times, an awful lot of noise. Brick Road has become an eclectic and ever-expanding family that we couldn’t be more proud of.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

About Brick Road Coffee
We are a locally and LGBTQ+-owned coffee shop at 4415 S. Rural Road Tempe, Arizona serving artisanal coffee, pastries, and pizzas. At Brick Road, everyone is welcome. Our founder/owners Gabe Hagen and Jesse Shank pride themselves on creating a space that is LGBTQ+ and sober-community friendly. In fact, “community,” is very important to us. We all travel our own paths in life, laying one brick at a time and taking each turn as it comes. Whatever direction your own Brick Road takes you, some things remain constant. We all hope to find acceptance, community, and maybe a great cup of coffee to warm us on our journey. Our mission is to be more than just a fabulous little coffee shop. We are working hard to create a place where the community intersects, connects, and supports each other in their individual goals. For many, the recent global pandemic has been a time to reflect on how time and energy are spent and what marks an individual will leave on their family and neighbors. We knew it was time to leave the corporate world and create a legacy born out of the desire to create and cultivate community.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

Believe it or not, Brick Road Coffee wasn’t intended, at the outset, to be the loud and proud beacon of queerness that it is. Sure, we always intended to be authentic, to be ourselves, and to be community-oriented. But we weren’t sure just how much we could afford to lean into being queer.

Despite the fact that we both had very romanticized ideas about what it would be like to run a coffee shop “someday when we retire” (picture a quiet café by the harbor, somewhere in the northeast – very hallmark channel setting), we began our more serious consideration from a strictly business-oriented lens. What was the industry like? What are typical margins? Who is our competition? Given all of the data and the business environment (read: pandemic) we came very close to joining a franchise. In the end, we were worried that we wouldn’t be free to support the social and charitable causes that were important to us, and we decided to go independent after all.

But still, we had to pay the bills, and this is Arizona after all. We weren’t hiding, but our nods to queerness were just that- subtle references and hidden hints: Friends of Dorothy, rainbow doves, our lending library. When we got the opportunity to participate in the Queermas toy drive for LGBTQ+ youth run by our friends at one n ten, it was an excuse to put up our first big rainbow at the shop, in the form of the gayest Christmas tree you’ll ever care to see.

And that’s when a family member first articulated the looming question: “Are you worried at all that you’ll lose customers?” There was the unspoken but implicit addendum, “for expressing yourselves?” And it clicked. No. No, we weren’t. In fact, our experience in the community was telling us the opposite and it was time that we recognized that.

Our customers were telling us that they loved authenticity. That they needed a space that dared to be different. We looked at each other and knew we both agreed – we were going to put ourselves out there and Brick Road was going to be whatever our community needed it to be. That decision has paid off in so many ways in terms of customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and our own mental health.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

It seems like a lot of marketing activities out there are focused on being very intentional when creating and cultivating a reputation. A brand is about more than just reputation, of course, but a lot of business owners hyper-fixate on reviews and approach opportunities to interact with their customers from a purely marketing perspective.

I think our secret sauce is that we decided two things early on. One: not everyone is going to dig our vibe or love our product. Two: profits aren’t our prime directive. This has allowed us to jump on opportunities that match our values without hesitation or apology, partner with really cool and driven people in the community toward common goals, and be intentional about serving the customer segments that need us the most. It’s easier for people to support a business that they feel they know, and you don’t get that if you’re carefully crafting a persona.

Of course, there is the simple fact that we’re filling a real need. Not for coffee, necessarily, but for a safe and inviting space where marginalized segments of our community can congregate, socialize, and just be themselves. Marketing is still vital; people need to know we’re here before they can get to know us. For the tough stuff, always find people smarter than you. We were lucky enough to find marketing partners that share our values and know how to authentically communicate our vision (shameless plug for the Felice Agency).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brickroadtempe.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brickroadcoffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrickRoadCoffee
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brick-road-coffee/?viewAsMember=true

Image Credits
Photo credit: Patrick Fuller, Fuller Story